FCHS cuts a symptom of bigger challenges

While FCHS saved some formerly-threatened music programs, administrators try to make ends meet as a 'perfect storm' descends upon area high schools.

Apr. 10, 2013

The Wedding Crashers Quartet, including Fort Collins High School junior Olivia Sponsler, center, perform during an April 1 concert in the school's auditorium. The high school's music programs face cuts related to new academic requirements and a projected decrease in enrollment in the coming year. / Dawn Madura/Coloradoan library

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The spotlight was on Fort Collins High School last week amid outcry over proposed cuts to its music programs. The broader view, however, is that enrollment shifts and new graduation requirements have principals tightening belts on multiple fronts and getting creative in times of “scarcity.”

Fort Collins High School Principal Mark Eversole said his school is caught in the “perfect storm.” This storm has his staff struggling to fill a proposed hole of nearly $440,000 — a number that will likely change several times between now and early May, when the school budget is finalized.

At this point, department heads are preparing to cut about 10 percent of their budgets in art, business, integrated services, math, music, physical education, science and world languages.

Updated projections show 78 students will leave and not return to FCHS in the 2013-14 school year. Under the Student-Based Budgeting model — in which money follows students — that’s a loss in funding of roughly $273,000.

To complicate the process, recent job changes have teachers teaching fewer classes, and new graduation requirements will add 20 more credits to a student’s workload. After a 2010 policy change, students need 240, not 220, credits to earn their diploma. Students now must also take classes in economics and personal financial literacy.

“When you add all that up, it means more sections without having enough people to teach them,” said Poudre High School Principal George Osbourne who, similar to Eversole, has grown class sizes and stopped offering certain classes to accommodate the necessary change.

In response to the new requirements and increased demand for economics and financial literacy courses, Eversole has upped the department budgets for social studies and consumer and family sciences.

While resulting impacts will likely touch the lives of most — if not all — students at Fort Collins High School, those studying music felt an immediate and acute effect of the proposed cuts.

Under a former and recent budget proposal, the school’s music department was to lose one part-time choir teacher, all jazz and barbershop choirs and other opportunities. Public outcry over the “devastating” cuts lead to discussions about what could be salvaged.

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During a School Accountability Committee meeting on Monday, Eversole said the department will still lose a teacher. Shuffling of current teacher duties and rescheduling, however, has preserved various choirs.

Junior Sarah Morain, a member of several top choirs, had heard rumors of the change but said “it was nice to hear that they are working as hard as they can to preserve as much of the department as possible.”

She added, however, that it’s still disappointing to see a program with statewide acclaim take a hit in support.

“I know that cuts have to happen, but my ideal is that they wouldn’t cut a program that’s growing,” she said of a department that had once been in the sights of friends considering transfers from other schools. They aren’t as certain of a move now, she said.

Osborne said Poudre doesn’t plan to cut any teaching positions but will reduce the numbers of hours worked by secretaries and other clerical employees. Money saved will fund positions in IT; more students and teachers need help with new technology — such as laptops. He also had to draw from reserves to maintain all current teachers, a move he says the school “can’t keep doing.”

That, coupled with the new graduation requirements, make for a “very interesting balancing act,” he said.